A blog about video games and not much else. Updates at intervals of time.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Spyro the Dragon Review

There are some times when I realize that I have far too many games to play. When I realize that I have so many dozen things I could be doing that I responsibly resolve to finish what I’m already doing. When I am tempted to buy or play a new video game but resist because I clearly have too much willpower and self-control for such things, and instead will dutifully and mechanically work through my list of things I already was going to do. This is not one of those times. Instead this is a time where I bought Spyro the Dragon instead.

And when I think about
it, I can’t actually remember one of
those other times…

Fortunately, this is one of those times where I didn’t
regret my decision in the slightest. With some of the money I had stored on
Playstation Network I bought Spyro the Dragon for $6 and spent an enjoyable few
days blazing through to 120% completion. It was quite a fun game and I’m going
to try and describe why, because that’s a thing that I do.

Spyro the Dragon was a game released in 1998 by Insomniac
games. I had no idea until now that Insomniac, who also later made the Ratchet
and Clank series (which I quite like) and the Resistance series (which I
haven’t played), were the ones originally behind Spyro. As a kid I knew people
who owned Playstations and saw them play Spyro the Dragon, but owning only a
Nintendo 64 at the time I never owned the game myself. Knowing that I certainly
wouldn’t get a good recent 3D
platformer any time soon, combined with the appealingly low price, I decided to
make up for lost time. I know that I could no doubt easily find an emulator for
this type of thing but I guess I’m old fashioned in the sense that I like to
pay for things I enjoy.

And enjoy the game I did. Spyro the Dragon is an
excellent example of high quality 3D platforming. The story is light as the
tone, which is considerably, but not in a bad way. The villain seemingly only
turns all the dragons (apart from young Spyro) to stone because they called him
ugly in a television interview (which they apparently have). The plot mostly
comes down to getting the bad guy and everything else is just a light
sprinkling of pieces of gameplay advice and jokes. You see every time you
release a dragon they have a bit of voiced dialogue to impart. Sometimes these
are useful hints towards gameplay, sometimes these are obvious hints towards
gameplay, and sometimes they’re jokes about how hilarious it is that Spyro
doesn’t like old people.

Haha! It’s funny
because old people are boring and Spyro doesn’t want to talk to them because
they’re boring!

I swear that particular joke is redone half a dozen times
or so and kind of wears out its welcome, but the rest of the dialogue is
usually at least somewhat amusing. But look at me, describing the paper-thin
story elements and I haven’t even talked about the controls yet. Spyro has the
usual ability of platform game stars to move around and jump, but also has a
few additional skills that set him out from your standard 3D platformer in the
gameplay department. He can flame the area directly in front of him, use a
charge attack or glide after a jump. Some enemies, usually armored, are immune
to flames. Other enemies, usually large ones, are immune to being charged. You move faster while charging but flame has
a wider area of effect and leaves you less likely to get hit if you miss. The
two attacks are well thought out in that they can accomplish things differently
even when both are viable options.

Gliding, meanwhile, completely changes up the way levels
can be arranged. Being able to glide across gaps allowed the level designers to
create areas that were nearby but inaccessible due to elevation. It lead to all
sorts of secrets only available by proper application of the technique and gave
the levels a wonderful feel of being interconnected. Even when the stages are
fairly linear the game often keeps it from feeling that way by having the
player cross in and out of areas they’ve already been via gliding. The stage design
in general isn’t completely linear and has plenty of branching paths and side
areas to collect the three collectibles in the game (treasure, dragon eggs and
imprisoned dragons).

Let me give you an example of what I mean. On one of the
stages in the Magic Crafters world (the third one) I saw a few ledges I couldn’t
get to as I went throughout the stage. I found several secret areas with extra
loot but never found a way back to those ledges. I went back and examined
everything carefully only to find that if I glided around a wall near the start
of the stage I could get to one of those ledges. And then that ledge had a path
to the other ledges, side platforms, and areas I didn’t even know about that
wrapped about the walls and rooftops of previous areas I explored. To discover
these things that were hiding right under your nose via clever use of the
techniques you’ve been taught is a great feeling.

The first area in the
game showcases this as well. See those walls and that building that are clearly
meant to keep the player boxed in? In a later area you can reach a point high
enough to glide on top of them and run around collecting secrets.

So that’s the best part about the gameplay, but it neatly
transitions into what’s probably the worst. Although the wealth of hidden
secrets in the game is awesome for people who love exploration, it can be quite
frustrating when you have no idea where to go. To be fair, this is only really
a problem if you’re going for 100% completion, as the way to the end of the
stage is usually fairly obvious. But self-respecting gamers like me who want to
grab every piece of treasure will no doubt have some point in the game where they throw up their hands in frustration
and look up a walkthrough; because even the cleverest among us might have
difficulty realizing that you were supposed to, say, chain several supercharges
to get big jumps and glide in a certain pattern about the stage to get a glide
long enough to fly to some obscure piece of background which was actually a
hidden area.

The second biggest problem is that a few jumps in the
game are, simply put, too difficult. It occurred multiple times that I would
blaze through stages without dying accumulating like a dozen extra lives and
then lose almost all of them to one particular jump or sequence of jumps.
Sometimes the designers make the gaps almost exactly the literal distance you
can jump and glide to if you time things absolutely perfectly, and the result
is nothing but frustration. There are some other minor moments of annoyance but
generally any problems other than these two are so minor they’re not worth
mentioning.

I think I only saw
this screen twice, and both times were for some precise glide jumping
shenanigans like those mentioned above

The visuals of the game are relatively good, though
certainly a product of their time. The graphical limitations usually don’t keep
the game from looking visually appealing because the stage design still looks
colorful and imaginative and varies a lot between the many stages of the game.
It can occasionally degrade things, however. The game seems to reform objects
in the distance into more basic polygons. This would be fine, but given how
fast you move when gliding or charging you can see this happening in front of
you in real time quite often.

The mountains in the
background of the title screen are a good example of what far-off objects look
like in this game. You could shave with the edge of that snow.

Despite their economy of far off objects, Spyro the
Dragon lags a fair amount, which is kind of a problem. The lag is usually
fairly slight and obviously affects the whole game world rather than just you,
this being a single player game. So the gameplay isn’t that worse for wear due
to it, but what actually suffers most is the music. I quite like the music in
this game. It’s got a unique feel that mixes oriental sounding bells and strings
with drums and electric instruments. Before I proceed I’ll just share some of
my favorite examples with you.

Jacques is the
penultimate boss of the game, and his stage has a faster version of the games
title theme

Dream Weavers is the
penultimate hub world of the game, and has some excellent music

Dark Hollow is a mellower
piece from earlier in the game, and thus a good contrast to those last two

Alpine Ridge is a
stage from the middle of the game with nothing special about it; I just love
the music so I had to throw it in

Now after listening to some of those songs you may
realize something. A large portion of the games songs are fairly fast paced,
and even the slower ones usually have some faster paced portions in the
background. This means that every time the game lags, the music quite audibly
starts to chug. It’s worse in some places than others, but some of the huge
stages in later parts of the game clearly suffer for it. I was once or twice
actually motivated to clean up enemies purely because they were screwing up the
pacing of a song that I liked.

There are a few miscellaneous aspects of the game I haven’t
mentioned, so let’s just go through them quick: Some of the stages are flying
stages where you can fly in any direction, and are tasked to go through hoops
and torch things in a certain time. Not much to say about these, they’re pretty
standard mini-games that serve as a decent break from the regular game. The hub
worlds are sort of like stages in their own right, filled with treasure to
collect, which is an idea I like. The boss fights are kind of disappointing,
usually just being an enemy you chase though a stage and occasionally hit when
they stop moving. Some are better than others, but overall they’re not
particularly interesting. The game has a nice little bonus stage and alternate
ending when you get 100% completion, which is nice.

The alternate ending
also includes this image, which I feel morally obligated to include in this
review

So that about sums it up. Spyro the Dragon is a game with
some minor flaws and frustrations that fail to keep it from being colorful,
interesting and fun. It has excellent music, a unique approach and fills its
levels with goodies for clever players to explore. If you like 3D platformers I
highly recommend you pick it up. Of course, it being hugely popular in its day
my endorsement probably holds about as much significance as someone declaring
breathing oxygen to be pretty cool, but I wanted to say it nonetheless.